Michael Hecht

Stepping into Michael Hecht's studio, one must pass under a taxidermy owl frozen in mid-flight, a present from Michael's wife. Intrigued by its solitary nature and its past as a religious symbol, Michael views the owl as his personal totem.

Stepping into Michael Hecht's studio, one must pass under a taxidermy owl frozen in mid-flight, a present from Michael's wife. Intrigued by its solitary nature and its past as a religious symbol, Michael views the owl as his personal totem.

Looking around his studio one sees its image repeatedly...an owl masked with his own face, an owl perched upon his own disembodied head. The owl is a further extension of Michael's self-portraiture as a means of communication.

Michael's work seeks the honesty within himself. He feels that death is what keeps people honest, a means to self-actualization. He believes his work and imagery need to be created without editing and his use of the self-portrait is partially due to his belief that human emotion is a universal truth that people can identify. Michael's paintings and prints illustrate extreme episodic emotional states, striving for a loss of consciousness of the self. He has come to depict this idea with the literal imagery of him losing his head.

A professor of printmaking at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Michael has a solid ability to explain the ideas behind his work. His presence is humble, yet his explanations and illuminations are paralyzingly striking. Having first seen his paintings during an Open Studio day, I was unable to shake the imagery of their distorted beauty.

The texture of his large-scale paintings, as well as the softness of his drawings, lures you in to further examine the content he leaves semi-hidden. Like the owl at his studio's entryway, one might say Michael has mastered the art of visually creating the quiet of death through the action of his life.

Michael has exhibited his work extensively throughout the region. He is currently a part of the show "Science, Art, Religion" a response to Scheuchzer's Physica Sacra at the University Art Gallery in the Star Store through January 10th. Michael prolifically creates his work on the fourth floor of the Hatch Street Studios and can be contacted at mike.h@verizon.net.